Portland stripper on Cory Booker messages: 'We just kept flirting'

A Portland stripper is making national headlines after the private Twitter messages she exchanged with Newark Mayor and U.S. Senate hopeful Cory Booker went viral.

Booker and Casa Diablo stripper Lynsie Lee appeared in an upcoming documentary about Twitter, which appears to be both how and why they started tweeting at each other in the first place.

Lee tells FOX 12 she's had a crush on Booker for months and was hoping he'd be at the premiere of that documentary in Austin, TX, so she began messaging him on Twitter.

Recently, she decided to post his responses on her Facebook page, catapulting their rather private messages directly into the public eye.

"I was flirting with him, I thought he was cute, and I was excited to meet him at the premiere, but he couldn't make it, so we just kept flirting," said Lynsie Lee.

In the messages to the stripper, Booker wrote that, "the east coast loves you, and by the east coast, I mean me."

Lee, whose photograph on Twitter features her topless on a yellow couch, replied, "Well now I'm blushing."

Booker responded, "It's only fair."

"I don't think he would have replied to me so many times publicly if he was not interested or at least not used emoticons," said Lee.

The Newark mayor, now running for the U.S. Senate, has long talked about the revolutionary power of social media, collecting 1.4 million Twitter followers in the process.

It's that exact power, experts said, that seems to have worked against him in this case, during an impulsive moment.

"I imagine he was responding as a person and not as a politician," said PSU Professor of Sociology Randy Blazak. "I'm sure people who are seasoned politicians, are saying to him that you're never a person once you are a politician and you have to think like everything will be exposed."

Lee said she doesn't think her relationship with Booker is anything to make a big deal about and had this message for the Newark mayor: "I would say, I just hope this doesn't hurt his career, because I'm rooting for you. And, you can take me out to dinner any time."

Booker's camp has yet to return FOX 12's requests for a statement, but a spokesman for Booker told the New York Times that the mayor talks with people from all walks of life on Twitter.